Ashok Kamath’s (Akshara Foundation) Failure: Systemic Failures in Education
“There’s no doubt our intentions are good” says Ashok Kamath of Akshara Foundation, “But these intentions are not backed by planning and that’s what I term as systemic failures.”
What are systemic failures in education? Lack of training, lack of follow up, lack of checks and balances, lack of established processes.
He even cites the example of a teacher training program that was implemented when school ended but had been unsuccessful because the teachers had forgotten what they had learnt by the time school has reopened.
The Context
A few years ago, the Akshara Foundation put forward an ambitious pilot, a 45 day program at primary schools that put non-readers on the path to reading. It was decided that the pilot would be launched in primary government schools across the expanse of Bangalore.
The project was a massive success, winning accolades for it’s efficacy and commanded the attention of the government. In an effort to ride on the success of this program, the government decided to implement it across the state of Karnataka.
The Failure
When it was scaled up, the project completely collapsed, seeing none of the success that it had in Bangalore.
The Akshara Foundation had provided the state with all the materials required, but only in a few cases did the project match the success that it had in Bangalore.
What had happened was that the government had taken all the material, made copies, but not provided any training and not ensured that there was an eco-system in place to monitor the progress.
Ofcourse, some teachers were sharp enough to figure out what the material meant and implemented it in their schools, but this was far from the majority of cases, where they were simply confused.
The Diagnosis
“This is when we realised we can’t just come up with a good model and pass it on, there is some hand-holding required and this is how you reckon with systemic failures.”
It was then that Kamath realised that just piloting a successful model and seeing it do well wasn’t enough. A bit of guidance is required when the project scales up, as the systems, checks and measures that are present in an ideal pilot may not be present in another context.
